Random questions

[Zenithfleet]

That's all good info, thanks.

I go way back with HQ, but Warhammer is something I am relatively new to. I decided on Karl Franz/The End Times because my very recent interest in Warhammer began with Vermintide last October. It's the period I know the most about and have been able to find the most readily available info on.

I've been converting old miniatures from a slew of systems, dungeon tiles, battle mats, and making my own custom tiles. I'm really trying to build a great setup for HQ. I'd love to get my hands on some older pre Age of Sigmar WHF minis but they're a bit expensive.

It makes sense to go with the Karl Franz period. Even back in the day, most official Warhammer stuff was set around then, with occasional forays into earlier periods (like the Great War Against Chaos that happened a couple of centuries earlier).

I think GW was deliberately vague about the first 1000 years of the Empire's history. From the year 1000 onward they created a detailed timeline, but before that, well, "records from that era are spotty at best". I don't know if they filled it in later, but back in the 1990s they left an intentional blank there so you could do whatever you wanted.

If you feel like looking for a source of background info that was written by GW around the time that Heroquest came out (end of the 80s/early 90s), you could try to track down Warhammer 3rd edition. But that can be hard to get hold of. (I've never owned a copy myself.)

Another suggestion is to see if you can find one or more of the original line of army books. Warhammer 4th and 5th edition was the first iteration of the game with dedicated books for each race/faction. They came out throughout the 1990s, when the Warhammer background had been somewhat revised from 3rd edition. In terms of art and flavour (not to mention miniatures) they're still pretty close to classic Heroquest. You can tell if they're the original line if they say 'WARHAMMER ARMIES' on the cover instead of just 'WARHAMMER'.

I've never played a game of Warhammer Fantasy in my life, but I love these books and collected all of them a few years ago just for the classic background info. These were the books that really solidified the 'finalised' version of the Warhammer World, which was then elaborated on and embellished in later editions, up until the End Times.

They usually start with a history section that goes from the earliest dim memories of the race/faction right up to the 'modern' Karl Franz period.

The best ones in terms of info useful for Heroquest in my opinion are the following:

Warhammer Armies- High Elves
(either 4th or 5th edition - different covers but the background section is almost copied and pasted in both, and it's SPECTACULAR, with over 12 solid pages of text covering 5000 years of history. If you only get one of these old books, this one is a good choice.)



Warhammer Armies - Dwarfs
(lots of good stuff about the various holds like Karak Varn)


Warhammer Armies - The Empire
(thinner than the other books but lots of useful info)


Warhammer Armies - Orcs and Goblins
(waaaagh, etc.)


Warhammer Armies - Skaven
(worth it for the sheer dark hilarity of these perennially backstabbing rats)


Warhammer Armies - Undead
(another really good background section on the history of skellies, zombies and mummies, including the biggest and baddest of them all, Nagash, who is a bit like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings but 1000% more metal)

(sorry about the awful pic - other links aren't working)

Of course, more recent books and online stuff is much easier to find, and if you're not into the older stuff (in terms of writing, aesthetic, etc.), then just ignore me.

But if you happen to stumble onto any of the books above, they're worth a read. A lot of the background was written by William King, who also did the classic Gotrek and Felix novels among other things. He knew how to write a good page-turning tale, more so than some of the next generation at GW.

Obviously Heroquest doesn't quite fit into the Warhammer timeline in any case. In HQ, Morcar/Zargon is responsible for everything wrong with the world, whereas he's nowhere to be seen in Warhammer; it was an earthquake and later a one-two punch of Orcs and Skaven that wiped out Karak Varn, for instance, not old mate evil wizard.

[Kurgan]

Yeah, but you wonder who engineered the quake... and who tipped off the monsters? Guess who!

[Zenithfleet]

Yeah, but you wonder who engineered the quake... and who tipped off the monsters? Guess who!

I have no idea what you're talking about ...

(My lord Morcar, Kurgan knows too much. Should I dispatch the Goblin assassin squad immediately?)

Actually in the Warhammer background there are not one but two mutually contradictory explanations for the earthquakes that destroyed the Dwarf realm.

The first (from 4th edition) is that the Skaven did it, sort of by accident, with an underground machine that exploded.

The second (from 5th edition) is that the Lizardmen did it. They live in the Warhammer equivalent of South America so you'd think they're a bit far away, but their Mage-Priests (big frogs) are the ultimate sorcerers and wanted to shift the continents a bit so they lined up with their intended places, as laid down in the plans of their vanished masters the Old Ones. The fact that this minor adjustment devastated a civilisation on the other side of the ocean didn't bother them.

I like the Lizardman explanation better but the Skaven were probably a bit miffed at the loss of street cred.

However, since the two explanations don't fit together and can't both be true, it may well be that it's all smoke and mirrors to conceal Morcar/Zargon's meddling.